Plains' first big snowstorm strands holiday travelers

November 29, 2005

DENVER (AP) -- Travelers trying to get home after Thanksgiving were stranded across the Plains on Monday as the region's first big snowstorm of the season closed hundreds of miles of highways, cutting visibility to zero and piling up drifts 6 feet high. Snow driven by winds up to 69 mph fell from North Dakota to the Texas Panhandle, shutting down schools, post offices and South Dakota state government. Four deaths were blamed on slippery roads in South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, and a fifth person was killed when a tornado picked up and hurled a car in Arkansas. Eastbound lanes of Interstate 70 were closed for nearly 350 miles from Denver across the Plains to Russell, Kan. Westbound lanes were reopened in some areas. Denver International Airport was spared, and had an estimated 158,000 travelers Sunday, one of the busiest travel days of the year. "We had some wind, that's it," said airport spokesman Chuck Cannon. The Colorado portion of I-70 was dry Monday, but the highway was impassable in western and central Kansas because visibility was nearly zero. Colorado halted eastbound traffic because there are so few places to stop and wait on the state's sparsely populated eastern plains.